October 30, 2011

Only about 1% of the nearly 4 million people who visit the national park each year are black, and the park system remains largely the province of whites. So officials were elated earlier this month when two groups of African Americans were touring Yosemite the same day.

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

October 30, 2011

Reporting from Yosemite National Park— Their Yosemite Valley tour was nearing its end, and the church ladies and gents from South Los Angeles had heard enough. Almost.

"He's been telling us stories he thinks we want to hear for two hours," said Ann Hale, 70, heaving a sigh of frustration from the back of the tram.

In fact, guide William Fontana had been regaling his listeners — most of them white — with stories about John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, about fur trappers and rock climbers.

"We're still waiting for at least a few words about Yosemite's African American Buffalo Soldiers," Hale grumbled to a fellow passenger.

After filing off the tram, some women from Grace United Methodist Church surrounded Fontana on the sidewalk outside the Yosemite Lodge.

"Questions, ladies?" he asked.

"Yes," Hale said. "We want to know why you left out Yosemite's African American story."
Fontana seemed puzzled. "I don't have enough time to talk about Buffalo Soldiers in a two-hour tour," he explained.

Hale nodded politely and walked away.

For more than 60 years, the National Park Service has been trying to reach out to African Americans and Latinos. But its 395 parks, monuments, waterways, historic places and recreational areas remain largely the province of white Americans and tourists from around the world.

A few weeks ago, a 300-foot Giant Sequoia fell in the Sierras. Not surprisingly, the only people who saw it fall (and videocammed the last few seconds) were a middle-aged German chemist and his wife. German tourists really like the Sierras. (And yes, a tree falling in the forest does make a sound.)

In an interview, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis reiterated an old lament: Parks must attract a more diverse slice of the American public or eventually risk losing taxpayer support. Yet only about 1% of the nearly 4 million people who visit Yosemite each year are African Americans.

So officials were elated earlier this month when they learned that two groups of African Americans, the one from Grace United Methodist and one from the Inglewood Senior Center, were touring the park on the same day.

That meant there were more than 65 black Americans on the valley floor on the same day, an event so rare that ranger Shelton Johnson — who is of African American and Native American descent and has worked in Yosemite for 18 years — called it "possibly unprecedented."

Leaving aside the more obvious things that can be said, I like to do compare and contrasts, so I want to compare the positive aversion many blacks feel toward visiting Yosemite, which is the crown jewel of what I might call Northern Californianess, with black attitudes toward playing golf. Over the years, there has been vastly more bias and exclusion in golf than in Yosemite, yet a not insubstantial fraction of black men with the money to play golf are highly enthusiastic about playing the sport. Going back to the early 1970s, I have frequently been grouped in foursomes with black male golfers, most of whom were pretty good at the game, knew the rules, and the etiquette, and were a pleasure to play with.

About Yosemite, eh, not so much.

So, what is it about Yosemite that repels blacks? Do they see it as a locus of white hippie-dippie environmentalists?

Or, maybe blacks tend to be more scared of heights than whites? This fear is not at all unreasonable in Yosemite, with its colossal cliffs. Something like a dozen and a half visitors have fallen to their deaths this year in Yosemite Valley alone. I vaguely recall black comedians joking about blacks being especially afraid of heights.

160 comments:

Man, is Ken Burns gonna be pissed. I wouldn't mind hearing few cursory lines in the tour program about black proto-rangers who were freed up due to the conclusion of the Indian Wars (have always enjoyed stories about Bill Pickett and Nate Love myself). But color me surprised if any park service flack is sincerely "afraid of budget cuts" from this pretext; as stari_momak pointed out in the Burning Man post, LL Bean's endured that boycott for 80+ years

Parks must attract a more diverse slice of the American public or eventually risk losing taxpayer support. Yet only about 1% of the nearly 4 million people who visit Yosemite each year are African Americans.

The logic behind this statement shows how deeply sick government enforcement of multiculturalism is.

Next time, are they going to cut public funding to opera houses because blacks don't like Mozart and Wagner?

Most cultures have no attraction to the wilderness. It seems to be mostly a northern-European thing. We've noticed that on miserable freezing fogbound winter days in Richmond Park, the biggest & wildest park in London, the people you will see there are a smattering of rich English walking their dogs, plus the Germans.

I bet Yosemite gets no south-Asian Indians either, it probably gets no Armenians. But SWPL Americans don't care about them; SWPL-Americans are obsessed with black Americans.

Camping is associated with the (white) 'extreme' sports you posted about recently. Camping is not a sport, per se, nor is it extreme necessarily, but it is a pre-requisite for a lot of SWPL. If you want to increase diversity in the OWS, just lay on motel accommodation with cable.Gilbert Pinfold

I think its more of an urban vs country demographics issue then purely racial one. I have cousins from Washington, Oregon and Idaho and every time they come here to San Francisco to visits us, they beg us to take to them Yosemite. And every time I go to Yosemite, I end up hating every minute it. There is something about the sound of crickets, the waterfalls, etc that just doesn't click well with a city dwelling ADD guy like me. I bet most blacks are urbanites like me, so they probably don't enjoy being out there.

I think nature is more appealing to introverted types with suburban or country backgrounds.

The blacks who have the money, not the rural residents of , say, Uniontown, Alabama; aren’t gonna do some white boy thing. My daughter once described camping as ‘self inflicted torture’ and I think camping and that outdoor white boy thing have a generational and a racial gap. I think blacks view Mother Nature as more of a torturing witch who is to be whipped into shape than a beauty to be adored. But in golf Mother Nature is pretty well whipped into shape . Camping? Blacks wonder why any sane person would want to put themselves at the random mercies of Mother Nature and go camping?Regarding minorities and nature, I think our newly arrived Hispanic lawnmowers and housebuilders have more of an affinity for Nature that accompanies their orginial Central American rural roots. I fish a lot, and places where I had not seen anyone at all, much less another white face, are being frequented by our new illegals. Wading with spiked boots for a half mile into the middle of a river you don’t expect to see anyone. It used to be me and Mother Nature, alone. Now it is me and Tecate beer cans and their owners. They poach a lot too, I mean why not, if you are illegal in the country who cares about the Fish and Game Laws? Why not take those six trout home, who cares if it is Catch and Release? My line about our new friends? White guys worship Nature, Hispanics eat it.

I think camping or going to the outdoors in general is more of an European thing than an African or Asian thing (and whites in North America inherited this sort of appreciation of nature). This probably has to do a lot with the fact that the outdoors in Europe are far safer than in Asia or in Africa. Europe lacks large predators or even venomous animals, so camping was a relatively safe thing to do.

there was a state park with a really nice swimming pool in upstate NY my family used to stop at on the way home from vacations (camping etc) one year there were a lot of blacks, next year, nearly all black, next year, shut down.

If diversi-crats got their wish the next articles we'd be reading would befuddled reporters debating why once save yosemite now has a 'youth crime problem'...

Blacks tend to be more social(albeit in an anti-social way)and in need of stimulus. They are not an introspective people. Out in nature, one feels alone(even when one is with friends). The immensity of it all makes one feel small, and one has to adjust to that feeling. Also, nature has the feel of permanence. You can't change it impatinelty with a flick of a remote control or joy stick. Blacks like to feel they are in command of stuff, to feel badass, and to have things easy. Out in nature, you have to slow down and go easy. Nature is a learning experience, and blacks fail at it as they do in school.

Paradoxically, blacks could be more social(if not sociable)because they are more anti-social. To be anti-social, one has to bump, clash, and be in conflict with other people, and so anti-social people seek contact with the rest of community, even if it's to be assholes. Take rappers; their schtick is anti-socialism, but what's the point of being anti-social if one's not engaged--even if negatively--with society? Without society to listen to all their yammering, what's the point of bitching, whining,and threatening? Of course, we musn't confuse 'anti-social' with 'asocial'. Asocial people tend to be loners while anti-social people relish abrasively rubbing against rest of society. Blacks have huge egos, but such egos are useless in nature. What are they gonna do? Talk shit to a tree or grizzly bear? To a toad or bluff?

1. Golfing is upper class, camping is redneck? I'd bet dollars to donuts that the old Jack and Jill clubs, Order of the Eastern Star, etc organized golf tournaments. I'd be very surprised if they sponsored as many trips to Oak Forest State Park.

2. It's not THAT hard to find public golf courses to play and practice on. It's a little harder to put together a family trip to a national park.

Nature worship is close to the hearts of northern Europeans- which might explain the Germans' love of the national parks, which were founded as a movement started in New England.

The appreciation requires one to shut up, both literally and one's inner voice, and let nature speak to you. But any activity that doesn't involve a lot of loud talking is boring and vexing to blacks. Black people love being black, and they love hanging out with other black people, even if they don't love them, because it allows them to do the thing they love most, talking loudly and nonsensically about almost nothing.

Oddly enough, I prefer city and suburban visitors to national parks. They come with a sense of reverence, as if they're experiencing something special. Locals, in contrast, either due to lack of proper education or being too familiar with the area, tend to treat national parks like their backyards.

Maybe it's due to the historical black narrative that said 'blacks had for too long lived in primitive hardship: African savagery and/or slavery and poverty; and so, what blacks need and should strive for is access to modern life. No point in returning to a place where one has to use an outhouse and such.

Yeah. Not hearing about the legendary Buffalo Soldiers of Yosemite is what's keeping blacks away from the park. If the beauty of that amazing valley isn't enough to attract you, you should stay in your ghettos.

It's pretty much the same here in Southern Africa. Local and foreign Whites and to a lesser extend East Asians predominate as visitors in the National Parks.

This is true in the famous Kruger Park, which is about the size and shape of Israel. It is even more so in the remoter parks with less tourist infrastructure. Parks such as the massive Central Kalahari, Chobe and Moremi in Botswana as well as Etosha in Namibia.

Of course Black locals work in these places as rangers and in lodges. But, given the choice, not many visit.

You don't see Blacks, hiking, yachting, SCUBA diving or driving 4x4 vehicles kitted out for Safari (though many do drive glossy urban 4x4s such as BMW X5s).

Though we speaking terms of Right vs Left, maybe the real conflict is between right vs right, i.e. white rightism vs other rightisms.

Blacks and other non-whites may be for 'leftist' policies but for tribal and 'selfish' reasons. They are leftist not so much because they agree with Marx but believe that, at this point in history, 'leftism' serves them better. And non-whites wanna come to the West not to create a 'universal-global community of happy equality' but because they think it will be better for themselves. They wanna have MORE; they don't wanna be equal with the rest of suffering humanity. They want the goodies for themselves.

They wanna come to the West for the same reason whites had once conquered and settled the New World--and places like Australia. If wihtes had sought to expand white interests and white power, non-whites seek to expand their own interests by invading the West(under the cover of 'tolerance' and 'universalist' terminology of course.) And we know that Jews use the 'universalist' language to mask what is truly a tribal agenda. So, what really motivates both sides is rightism. Leftism is essentially a tool, not a deeply held conviction. The real motor on all sides is rightism.

One form of rightism is tribalism, but another is hierarchism, and in this sense, the global-universalist elites are also rightist. They see globalism as being in their interest to maximize their profits and power. If rightism is anti-egalitarian, then globo-universalists are experts at the game. They spout the usual cliches about equality--as the artistocrats pretended to be good decent Christians--, but they are doing everything to make workers' wages lower, buy up political influence, own the media, increase their own profits, and control the rest of us.

There is race-based rightism and there is class-based rightism. Globo-universalist elites are class-based rightists. And gays, who are part of this elite, are not trying to be equal with the rest but better than the rest.

Germanic peoples manifest their regard for the outdoors and its wild creatures whenever the opportunity arises, and regardless of whatever transitory state commands their formal allegiance. It is a core Germanic attribute, and that fact that German tourists witnessed the fall of the great Sequoia is one of those seemingly random events that reveals a greater truth.You can be sure that the rest of the "white" tourists who frequent America's natural parks are of overwhelmingly German, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon stock. When you walk the backcountry and greet fellow hikers, blue eyes will meet yours.

The only opportunity I've had to visit Yosemite so far was at the height of the summer season - i.e. godawful crowded. So the idea that there are people with a positive aversion to visiting the place sounds like a good thing to me.

But seriously, the whole idea of "outreach to minorities" is ludicrous. If you don't "get" wanting to go someplace just to walk around and let your jaw drop at the magnificence all around you, there's no reaching you. Last time I went to Yellowstone, there were loads of Chinese tourists there, enjoying themselves doing just that, and I hadn't noticed any efforts to make the place "relevant" to their particular ethnicity. (And spare me the oft-heard crapola about "playgrounds for rich white people". When I was young and broke the national parks were fantastic cheap vacations. But "minorities" I've argued with about this apparently think that the white national park experience consists of swanking at the Ahwahnee.)

Apparently white people are never supposed to spend their money on things they enjoy. I read not long ago that services in the Lake District in Britain were defunded because, you guessed it, only white people were visiting.

That said, as a heavy user of the national parks over many decades, I can vouch that they're excellent places for both HBD observation, and gauging the relative state of national economies. Ideally, I like to plan a hiking vacation around economic upswings in countries with people who hike quietly, and stay away when noisy, voluble people have enough tourist dollars to hit the trails.

I lived in Alaska for 25 years before returning to Ohio in retirement, and I don't think I ever saw a Black person hiking or camping. Anchorage has a black population of 6% of the total, so Blacks are not absent. Since 2004, I am back in Ohio. I am an asst. organizer for a hiking club with 2,400 members, and I don't think I have ever seen a Black person on a hike or campout. I camp a lot at state parks around the Midwest, and blacks hardly ever are observed. I think it is some kind of cultural differential with blacks.

I lived in Anchorage for 22 years, where the Black segment is 6% of the total population. I don't think I ever saw a Black person day hiking or camping. Since 2004, I have been back in Cincinnati. I am an asst. organizer with an active hiking group of over 2,400 members. I doubt if I have ever seen a Black person on any of a couple of hundred hikes. I also camp a lot at Midwest state parks, and Black campers are about totally absent. I think it is a cultural thing with Blacks to put little value on outdoor pursuits.

Isn't it more the opposite, that until fairly recently in history nearly every human culture saw wild nature and the mountains not as beautiful things to seek out but dangerous inconveniences to be conquered or avoided if possible?

Golfing is different. You're in a carefully manicured outdoor environment playing a competitive sport. But pretty much only Europeans (and Japanese) actually enjoy wilderness for emotional/aesthetic/spiritual reasons, largely as a legacy of the Romantic movement.

In my experience, the only traditional outdoor activity that attracted large numbers of black people was fishing. I've known lots of black guys who absolutely love it. Very few like hunting, and the only ones who like hiking and other SWPL-oriented outdoor activities are those who mostly hang out with SWPLs. Part of this is likely that fishing is cheap, and, unlike hiking, offers a good likelihood of at getting a meal out of it.

But black women, in particular, seem to have almost no interest whatsoever in any of it. Probably the most culturally insular demographic in the country.

Why is there always so much worry and fretting over black proclivities? So blacks avoid the national parks? Why is this an issue? The parks are there. Anyone can go to them. If blacks choose not to, why can't that just be that and let it go? Why do we have to dig into issues when there is no issue to dig into?

Men of all races play golf partly for networking purposes. I don't golf, but if I was a black guy in the business world, I would. It's a world where etiquette, wit, and athletic ability are rewarded, and I would want the rewards.

National Parks? Not so much. There's a lot of scenery, but other than that, the appeal is telling people about it after you leave. Black people, who usually socialize mostly with members of their own race and value "keeping it real"(rural whites used to do the same, but they had it shamed out of them) simply aren't interested in hearing nature stories. I sort of don't blame them.

By the way, where do groups of black golfers go to eat before and after matches? Would you believe Cracker Barrel? I like that restaurant, but I rarely see black people there. When I do, they are almost always wearing golf clothing.

I do think the camping and the effort to get to a remote location are a large part of it. I've camped at probably fifty national/state parks and forests over thirty years and don't actually recall seeing a black couple/family camping.That said, why is this considered a problem?

Visited Yosemite for the first time three years ago in September. I think park officials need to worry less about attracting more visitors of any stripe and more about managing the crowds that made the valley floor look like a mega-shopping mall parking lot. What a mess!

I'd be curious if there was a difference between Western blacks and Southern blacks in terms outdoorsy-ness.

Outside of the South, blacks are mainly urban, having only moved to Northern and Western cities fairly recently.

It's only in the South where you still find large #s of country and rural blacks.

Do blacks in the South engage in outdoor activities at rates similar to Southern whites?

I know fishing is pretty popular with Southern blacks, not sure about hunting. It seems quite understandable that Southern blacks would have learned to fear hunting since "accidental" shooting are not uncommon.

Another issue is the quest for authenticity. Most blacks feel they are "authentic" just by being black.

Suburban and urban whites are much more likely to feel their lives lack "authenticity", so they seek out more authentic experiences to give their lives meaning. For many, getting in touch with nature is a big part of that.

I get the sense that American blacks like warm summer nights, like you'd find in the South, a lot more than cold mountainous terrain. I'm from the Pac. NW, so I love the mountains, glaciers, towering trees, rocky shores pounded by waves and drenched in rain, etc. Not so much the stifling heat and screeching bugs of, say, Alabama.

The thing is, we whites generally made national parks out of the kinds of places that evoked some ancestral memories from the old country -- even from our paleolithic roots. I don't think it would be fair to say that blacks not appreciating these places so much means they don't like nature. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that a big part of the problem blacks have in the US is that in most places they are not in their natural habitat.

If you look at black settlement patters in the South, they are concentrated along the rivers in an environment more like the one they came from. They seem to prefer bucolic settings where one can go fishing or hang out in the steamy woods and fields of the deep South. And for some reason, their societies fell apart when we shipped them up to cold, northern cities and had them live in monolithic projects...

Environment still matters today -- a great deal more than people realize. Blacks' aversion or apathy toward what white folks find comforting and beautiful only confirms this. One of whites' biggest mistakes, I think, has been in assuming that black people have the same tastes and comfort zones we do, when in fact they actually seem to prefer places more like their ancestral home.

"In an interview, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis reiterated an old lament: Parks must attract a more diverse slice of the American public or eventually risk losing taxpayer support."

First of all, this is bullshit. Democrats aren't going to cut support for the national parks, unless whites abandon the party almost completely. Republicans aren't going to cut support because the parks don't attract a "diverse" clientele.

But it is a reminder for lefty SWPLs that the browning of America means, well, the browning of America. NAMs don't care about the environment the way that even many conservative whites do.

Park attendance is just another way for Leftists to indulge their obsession with race. The national parks aren't exactly busing whites to the parks. Whites go there because we want to. No one has to drag us.

"We're still waiting for at least a few words about Yosemite's African American Buffalo Soldiers,ahhh when PC worlds collide...Oppressing indigenous peoples.... vs. oppressed blacks.. how do SWPL deal with it??

or is it like the Jewish justification for predatory money lending and over representation in the NKVD.. "we had too because we were oppressed."

Yosemite seeks a more diverse visitor base another great moral crisis of our time.. and when they get the numbers, they'll have to double police and trash pick details.. (have you ever seen how blacks litter?)

Most people are only capable of being interested in other people. The only human group whose men can on occasion be excited about the impersonal is also the only one that's shown any interest in figuring out the laws of the Universe. It's also the group that's invented almost all of the existing technology, mostly by tinkering with inanimate objects.

I think part of that is an irrational fear on the part of blacks that national parks and forests are full of redneck white guys with guns that are hiding behind trees waiting to knock off black people.

And, you're right, black people just don't like camping!

I've done about a half dozen or so mountain climbing trips with guide services, and the only time I saw a black guy was in 2008 on McKinley/Denali, and he was a South African guy. I think he might have been sponsored by the South African government, possibly in a quest to be the "first black guy to do the 7 summits".

Or, maybe blacks tend to be more scared of heights than whites, a fear that is not at all unreasonable in Yosemite. Something like a dozen and a half visitors have fallen to their deaths this year in Yosemite Valley

On the golf question, I think that blacks are just attracted to sports and competition.

If you decide to hold a marathon through a major national park or forest, I bet that many blacks will turn up (especially if there's a big cash jackpot for the winners). So if they want more blacks to pass through, they can start 'the great Yosemite long distance race' or something like that.

Much of the appeal of golf to blacks is based on the perceived status markers associated with golfing. It is a sport that demands special clothing, expensive gear, and exclusive memberships. Blacks like this type of thing. There are no status points to be earned from a contemplative walk in the woods, an activity with appeal almost exclusively to Europeans and northeast Asians. This is what is laughable about the Sierra Club signing on with the demographic transformation crowd. Once whites are a minority in California, these natural preserves will be seen by the majority as expensive luxuries that they see no point in protecting.

I think that for whatever reason most black people don't see the attraction of 'roughing it' or going somewhere that is wild to an inhospitable degree (golf courses by contrast are built to be pleasant). Hiking steep trails just for the hell of it is much more of a white thing (and probably more of a *northern* European thing too... not a lot of Italians on the mountainous trail from Capri to Anacapri when I went there, but lots of Germans). It's interesting that there are no world-class black rock climbers that I'm aware of. Physically, they should be well able to compete - but it's a very, very white sport.

This phenomenon is not confined to Yosemite. Over the years, my observation has been that tourists at nature-oriented attractions are overwhelmingly white.

I wonder if it's more about class than race. The tourists in sites whose primary attraction is natural beauty seem to skew toward the upper middle class. This is true even in places that are accessible by car and close to big cities, like Shenandoah. It becomes more true the more remote the site. At Olympic National Park last summer, besides white North Americans, there were plenty of Asian-Americans and Asian and European tourists, including some from Spain; but there were no blacks and no American Hispanics.

This is not news: SWPLs love nature and the outdoors, and American SWPLs are mostly white and Asian. Middle and upper middle class Europeans are even more SWPL than Americans.

The idea that looking a beautiful natural scene is entertaining all by itself, with no added attractions needed, seems to be a characteristically European and Asian idea, doesn't it?

And, by the way, it's not just about camping. Lots of whites who have never camped and never plan to (for example, hot water, flush toilet and HVAC-loving me) spend their vacations in places of natural beauty rather than overprices resorts or crowded cities.

While showing some Dutch visitors around San Francisco, {Alcatraz, Sausalito, Chinatown, Coit tower}, they asked, "Where are all the black people?" They absolutely refused to believe me when I tried to tell them in various ways that black people don't partake of the same activities that other people do. They just aren't interested. I know I came off as the quintessential American racist to them...

Much of the appeal of golf to blacks is based on the perceived status markers associated with golfing.

Also, I'm told that golfing can be a gregarious sport. There's competition, but there's also time for talking, laughing, kidding around, and bonding while you're playing.

African-Americans tend to be more gregarious than white people, so golf is a natural fit.

Also, sorry to repeat an earlier comment, but really it's not just about camping. Most visitors to national parks aren't campers. You don't have to want to live rough or partake in strenuous exercise (both of which are indeed ultra-SWPL*) to enjoy a "contemplative walk in the woods" or just staring at the astounding beauty of, say, the Uncompahgre National Forest.

*Ultra-SWPL and also traditionally ultra-preppy. Ever noticed how often those two things go together?

"If you look at black settlement patters in the South, they are concentrated along the rivers in an environment more like the one they came from. They seem to prefer bucolic settings where one can go fishing or hang out in the steamy woods and fields of the deep South. And for some reason, their societies fell apart when we shipped them up to cold, northern cities and had them live in monolithic projects..."

They didn't settle themselves there. Their slavemasters settled them there because the lowlands are farmable and conducive to large plantations, a classic geography is destiny example. The uplands in the South still have virtually no blacks because slavery was extremely limited in the uplands. Subsistence farming existed there, not plantations. Not surprisingly, those areas (East Tennessee, the "Free State of Winston" in Alabama, etc) were the pockets of Unionist sentiment in the Civil War and produced the bulk of Southern Union soldiers.

Not surprisingly, the only National Forests where I've ever seen blacks were in lowland areas in south Mississippi, S. Alabama, and in N. Florida. They were always deer hunters. Those forests have a lot more private land in-holdings, so there are some blacks who have homes in those forests and still hunt them. Those are about the only exceptions i know of.

While showing some Dutch visitors around San Francisco, {Alcatraz, Sausalito, Chinatown, Coit tower}, they asked, "Where are all the black people?" They absolutely refused to believe me when I tried to tell them in various ways that black people don't partake of the same activities that other people do.

They came all the way from Holland to see all these magnificent places and all they could ask was 'where are the black people'?

I have a theory about this, Steve. After playing basketball with blacks for almost 20 yrs., I learned that many feel that if they travel beyond large urban areas, they're going to run into the KKK. In their minds, there's no difference between rural California and rural Alabama ca. 1950.

Bbartlog SaidIt's interesting that there are no world-class black rock climbers that I'm aware of. Physically, they should be well able to compete - but it's a very, very white sport.

---------------------------------I don't know much about rock climbing, but I'm betting that it is not just about physical strength and courage. I am guessing that there is a lot of thinking, preparing, learning and practicing involved. It seems like a decent amount end up falling off the mountain.

The other thing is that I'm guessing it is a sport where you pretty much have to be your own coach. The more other people can coach you, the more blacks can succeed by having leveraging the intelligence of a coach against their physical gifts. Today shooting baskets is a science back in the science wasnt perfected and you had to learn for yourself, the self taught white was at an advantage

Speaking of Germans, when hiking in the Hollywood Hills up through 1990, when you said hello to a hiker passing you, about 1 out of 4 would reply Guten Tag or some Scandinavian equivalent. Then, the recession of 1992 seemed to make hiking more hip, and since then the number of hikers and dog walkers has grown considerably and become more representative of the demographics of people who live within five miles of Mulholland Drive.

I am watching Ken Burns' national park film and guess what ranger they interviewed several times, Shelton Johnson.

I want to be a ranger just so I can wear the hat. Nobody wears hats anymore, even pilots, and cops in many places don't. You have to have a hat if you are a pilot.

Southern Utah, which has many national parks, is still a Whitopia. I'd love to live there with its great scenery and good demographics. I'd love to live out west anywhere and be able to go to the mountains on the weekends.

You can go into nature and not camp. There are plenty of areas to do day hikes in the Sierras and many other areas. In fact, there is a whole web site on it.

If white liberals really wanna touch Negroes, it's quite simple. Instead of luring Negroes out into the woods, white libs should just go live in places like South Side of Chicago, Watts, Detroit, or Baltimore. Now, how difficult was that?

A friend and I were avid golfers, and we met this black guy we liked. Turned out he played golf, too, so we invited him to play. For some reason, he showed up with his wife, who didn't play. I don't get it.

"national parks, which were founded as a movement started in New England."

Royalty and the aristocracy have had game preserves since the Middle Ages. Poaching in royal parks was often a capital offense. The aristocracy did not need to hunt. They did it for fun. If they wanted to, they could have sat in their castles and palaces all day, with meat being brought to them on gilded plates.

The aristocracy was martial in origin, and hunting is sort of a cousin to war. But perhaps there was more to it. Their descendants certainly love nature for itself. Perhaps they did too.

Maybe this is relevant: from what I've read, the earliest known instance of anyone on Earth ever climbing a mountain "just because", for no practical reason, is the Florentine poet Petrarch climbing Mt. Ventoux in the French Alps in 1336.

"Yosemite looks like the forest primeval where white people evolved. Black people probably feel more at home in a jungle."

And yet we've already had commenters talk about the predominance of whites in national parks located in Alaska and the Kalahari.

"And for some reason, their societies fell apart when we shipped them up to cold, northern cities and had them live in monolithic projects..."

Fell apart compared to what? Not compared to Africa, I don't think. And is the rural South really much of an idyll of theirs?

I would like to do a poll and give people a choice of winning an all expense paid trip for a week at the Super Bowl or an week at Yosemite, Yellowstone or Zion including staying at the national park lodge or a hotel of their choice and see what people choose based on race, sex, income.

Feeling guilty because someone else is missing out on something by his own choice is a uniquely Western sentiment. I'll never get it. It would seem that actions (or lack there of) say something about the actor, not... everyone else. The lack of interest in Yosemite, on the part of the African Americans, simply means that, generally, black people don't like visiting national parks. Live nature is not entertaining nor appealing to a great number of people, especially if they grew up in urban environments. Not a big deal.

And about Burning Man... It was moved to its current location to get away from the homeless and the criminals, not black people. From what I understand, everyone is more than welcome, as long as they adhere to certain disclosed rules. In fact, it seems to be some sort of a fantasy of inclusion, freedom and brotherly love. How silly is it, then, that some groups want special invitations and VIP status! That very sentiment directly contradicts the spirit of the event. "We just don't feel welcomed", without any concrete examples of hostility (or even cold treatment) seems to mean, "You didn't beg us hard enough, and you didn't bother to create an event that would cater to our exact tastes". Actually, that contradicts the spirit of the modern West. We should do everything to ensure that everyone has access to everything, on equal terms, and that everyone is equally safe. With that arranged, it's up to the people whether they participate, or not. If black people want to enjoy nature trails, indie rock, gothic belly dance, snowboarding or dancing around a fire while indulging their inner mythology-geek, I think they are sincerely welcome, at this point. Heavily promoting to and actively recruiting from a certain group of people who don't seem to be into it, in hopes that they'll engage with something that the regular participants consider to be enjoyable, spiritual and (often) unifying is just bizarre. But then again, I don't understand the concept of hunger striking either. It's another phenomenon that only happens in the West or in front of the Western journalists.

Steve, can I bring you up to date on blacks and public golf? I've been playing California public courses since the early '70's, and you're right, at one time blacks were a significant presence there. But that's really fallen off. For example, in the last two yrs. I've played 60 rounds at public courses from Monterey to Sacramento, and I've seen black golfers at only one place - a course on the Oakland-San Leandro border. My theory: public employment overtime is so prevalent that there's just too much money to be made to waste time playing golf.

I think part of that is an irrational fear on the part of blacks that national parks and forests are full of redneck white guys with guns that are hiding behind trees waiting to knock off black people.

It's true. I knew a ghetto black kid who was terrified of going to Napa Valley because he thought he'd get lynched there by the KKK. If it's that dangerous in Napa Valley, just imagine how bad it is in Yosemite Valley.

Went to Arches and Canyonlands NPs earlier this year and ran into a ton of Germans and Brits. And the longer and more strenuous the hike, the higher the proportion of Germans to all others, I'm talking about more than half the people we saw.

I have been climbing in Yosemite for many years & have never seen a black climber. Nor at an urban climbing gym either. Lots of asians are into it, though.

The scientist/engineer climber with his climbing asian girlfriend is nearly a stereotype in the climbing community though. I happen to be one of those guys.

As for the suggestion of having competitions like marathons in parks, there is already something like this; it is called trail and ultra-marathoning. And it is dominated by white guys b/c the purses (when they exist) are so small it doesn't attract the east africans.

I mean, visit an inner city basketball court and take a look at the participants.

Visit a working class town with bb courts and do the same.

Visit a middle class town's bb courts all year (those in CA are virtually usable all year) and do the same.

Guess what? Lots of blacks. Fewer whites, even fewer Hispanics, and rarely an Asian to be found.

Now look at the tennis courts of the middle class towns. Ah, lots of Asians, you say?

How many blacks do you see on ski slopes?

Blacks are not the familiar with the great outdoors.

The cats at Yosemite gotta be careful. Reach too hard for diversity and they might just find that Half Dome and the rocks of the Indian caves and the granite above the tree line in Yosemite will all be tagged by the Nortenos and the Surenos and god knows who else.

BTW, Steve, the people of the Central Valley think of Yosemite as part of their neck of the woods rather than as "Northern CA." (Yeah, I know, it bounds the Valley rather than being IN the valley, but they get really ticked off by those who think of CA as only NoCal and SoCal.) I think they have a point.

Language wise, Greece is divided into German as dominant second language in the more industrial north, English as dominant second language in the more touristy south.

But on all the Greek islands, Cyclades, Sporades, Dodecanese, Crete, etc., the monuments have markers in Greek and then German. Most Greek monuments are on elevated areas, to protect against attack from the sea, and apparently it's overwhelmingly Germans who bother to take the time to hike up and see them, while all the Brits, Australians, Canadians and Americans are getting drunk on the nude beach down below.

At the bottom of Grand Canyon and in the more remote parts of NW Death Valley you're as likely to hear German as English. Interesting crew.

The northern European appreciation for wild nature is documented going back two thousand years. In his memoir Conquest of Gaul, Julius Ceaser remarked how the Germanic peoples loved to remove people from forests that they conquered in their love for open forestland, both as a buffer against other peoples and for hunting, so as not to turn into an agricultural people.

Bbartlog said:It's interesting that there are no world-class black rock climbers that I'm aware of.

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I think you would find low-to-vanishing black participation across all of the extreme sports, in the modern, x-games definition of the term. In skydiving I've known perhaps half a dozen licensed black jumpers over the past 15 years, most with military backgrounds. (The United States Parachute Association published demographics--http://www.uspa.org/AboutSkydiving/SkydiverDemographics/tabid/303/Default.aspx--don't include racial stats.) I'm not aware of any black BASE jumpers.

Part of the reason may be that the rural areas of the north and west are too white for most blacks to feel comfortable in.

I also agree with those that say hiking and camping tend to favor those who are introverted. This is why northern Europeans are disproportionately avid hikers and campers(and mountain-climbers) while virtually no blacks are interested in any of that.

But there may be more to it than this, in that those who love the great outdoors may have a better understanding of Mother Nature and all she does for us(this may very well be due to IQ, besides introversion). Too many people of all races are so used to the polluted air of big cities they feel no need to escape to the woodlands to gulp down some rejuvenating fresh air. If a person doesn't care about their health or doesn't know any better, they can't appreciate the air-purifying benefits of a forest. In my experience, it always seems that the least educated people I know have no understanding at all for why I love to hike or spend several days in the wilderness.

In contrast, blacks love Las Vegas. I went on a company junket with a mixed group, and I was astounded how much money they took along for gambling. On the way back, they all swore they were ahead.

When I first went to LV in 1969, the Strip was still segregated. The pit bosses were really nasty about it. Of course they always had black acts there. Then the Hilton or somesuch booked Ray Charles, and the casinos had to put up with a mass of them coming through the front doors, from Socal..and they learned how much money blacks spent, gambling, drinking, eating, getting down with the whole scene.

"First of all, this is bullshit. Democrats aren't going to cut support for the national parks, unless whites abandon the party almost completely. Republicans aren't going to cut support because the parks don't attract a "diverse" clientele."

I am guessing that folks who like to go hiking rarely use the phrase, "I am bored." Dumb people are seemingly always bored, which is why our entertainment culture fits them so well. They can just sit and watch TV or play video games on welfare all the time.

Blacks who don't like mountains, camping, visiting national parks probably feel like me when people insist that I should like eating fish. "What's the big deal?" I ask them. "Why does it bother you that my taste buds reject the taste of fish?"

They have no answer. Mr. Director of the Park leave them alone. They aren't driven to visit your park any more than I am driven to order fish. Big deal.

This is a staple of black stand-up. Someone mentioned Hughley, but you may remember Jamie Foxx's routine parodying the rote activity of affluent U.S. blacks--safari in Tanzania--so that would undermine the Jungian memory explanation. I think Byronic romanticization of nature required specific conditions not found among the lion's share of world cultures (arguably there is an equivalent in 19th century Japan, which was bound up in Edo nostalgia as well)

Camping, hiking-- it's some kind of "ice people" thing. In addition to the Northern European peoples, Northern Asians like camping and hiking too-- in the USA the Koreans are especially avid.

I think we just have the "wrong" kind of Africans in America-- descended mostly from agriculturalists rather than herders. I wouldn't be very surprised if, say, Masai-descended Africans liked camping and hiking.

In my experience, Mexicans like day-hiking but aren't into camping much, except on beaches while they're fishing. When they hike they like to eat well and drink a lot, so for example they will (please note, I really am not making this up) drag those wheeled coolers miles over hiking trails. Mexicans litter a lot.

One reason why hunting is unpopular among blacks (at least outside the rural South) is lack of access to legal firearms. Blacks are more likely than whites to have criminal records that prevent them from owning firearms, and are more likely to live in urban areas where people aren't allowed to own guns.

Regarding the camping habits of Mexicans, they seem to enjoy picnics but not camping or hiking per se. I also agree that they like to bring the inside outside. This is a problem on National Forests surrounding urban areas where Mexicans have been know to bring old couches and loungers to their picnic spots.

One reason why hunting is unpopular among blacks (at least outside the rural South) is lack of access to legal firearms.,could also be its not much fun.. sitting for 4-8 hours waiting for a turkey to trot by. it requires silence, patience, concentration

I think that urbanity is a factor as is relative wealth. But in 115 comments I haven't heard another factor that I think may be as large: absence of fathers. How many of those who camp first went with their fathers? How many single mothers decide "I have too little to do, how about I bring my two boys and girl to the wilderness for a weekend to appreciate nature?". Camping is passed on primarily by fathers and the black community no longer has fathers, thus, no camping.

"Not liking camping is the norm among humans. The question should be 'Why do Central/Northern European Whites like camping?' "

Exactly. The real question isn't why black people are so weird about nature, but why are Germanic whites so weird about nature. Compared with all world populations blacks are more typical, and Germanics are more atypical.

If you live in CA or Nevada, it's not costly to get there, and to enjoy it, you don't have to hike or do anything other than marvel at the wonders of nature in order to love it. It takes your breath away.

As several people have noted, fishing is one outdoor activity in which blacks do participate. There are differences in black and white fisherman though. Blacks tend to view fishing as a practical thing and fish simply to catch fish. Whites- even lower income whites- are more likely to view fishing as a form of recreation.

Blacks tend to pursue fish that are good to eat rather than fun to catch (for example, catfish more often than largemouth bass), and I have rarely seen any black people practice "catch and release."

I also agree with those that say hiking and camping tend to favor those who are introverted. This is why northern Europeans are disproportionately avid hikers and campers(and mountain-climbers) while virtually no blacks are interested in any of that."

I just spent a few days in San Francisco. (I used to live there.) There are plenty of Europeans (mostly Germans), Koreans, and non-Californian white American tourists, but there are very few black tourists.

Jimmy Kimmel regularly used to mock Karl Malone on KROQ, and later the Man Show, for his penchant for squirrel hunting. So there's at least one Black guy who loves hunting. Adrian Peterson of the Vikes is a big hunter too. A number of Black NFL players just love hunting. But that's more a Southern thing. Urban Black guys find it distasteful.

It is probably a regional/class issue. SWPL-ism pulling in NE and Western Urban yuppies to the outdoors. While Black urbanism repels them from outdoor activities.

Fontana seemed puzzled. "I don't have enough time to talk about Buffalo Soldiers in a two-hour tour," he explained.

Well, that was a pretty obtuse thing to say. If its such a big deal to have black tour groups in the Park, simply cribbing from the Park's Buffalo Soldiers page would appear to be customer relations 101.http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/buffalo-soldiers.htm

When did pain begin among organisms? Which organism was the first to evolve to feel pain?

Are genes deceptive? When organisms are simple and without consciousness, life works like a machine operating according to a program. But once consciousness arose, genes had to fool the organism that there was 'meaning' to life. This 'meaning' need not be intellectual. It could be affection and attachment among animals. If this is the case, evolution was possible by a series and layers of lies. This could be why we are so averse to face the truth even as we look for it. We say truth is meaningful, but it can undermine the 'meaning' we are so accustomed to--and dependent on for emotional well-being.

Attitude towards the outdoors tends to be circumstantial a la cuisine folkways, marriage customs, style of music. Are there examples of famous black explorers (aside from Matthew Henson and Lewis & Clark's slave)? There were Moorish surveyors and navigators, sure. In my elementary years we had the big fads like Africans supposedly founding the Olmec civilization, and other long-disproved scholarship. Primogeniture was a big problem in Spain, not really that much in sub-Saharan Africa, so the call of the wild is probably easier to ignore in certain social structures.

the phenomenon is not confined to almost anything. there's literally a 1000 things africans aren't very prominently featured in.

in the most reprehensibly racist generalization never allowed to be made in 2011 about any group except hetero european men: africans are not a very curious, outgoing, inquisitive, creative, or dynamic group of people on average. in general they like to sit around and do nothing. there's about 5 activities they really get into and that's about it. and europeans created most of those activities, too. if europeans had not invented the television that they watch so much and the video games that they play so much and the few sports that they are "interested in", one wonders what they would fill their time with instead.

if left to their own devices they basically do almost nothing. they do what it takes to survive and that's about it. there's hardly anything wrong with this. they're doing their thing and that's cool. but it gets tired when the liberals want to ram africans into everything.

i often make a joke about africans sitting around doing nothing for ten thousand years, waiting for some europeans to develop a new sport for them to play. well, that's not very far from the truth. in this time of an NBA lockout, the question posed by one of the players, "Why don't we just create our own league?", is highly instructive. yes, why don't you just create your own league? hoops is one of the only things ON EARTH that anybody would actually allow the argument "Blacks are interested in that."

but not interested enough even to create their own league. interested juuuuust enough to play a sport that some other group created, in leagues that other groups established and manage.

if you check out any field of human endeavor you will quickly begin to note the absence of africans. and in today's world, you'll probably have also been conditioned, for years, to then reflexively think "not enough blacks".

you know there is that interesting dichotomy between africans in third world dumps, who are really close to nature all the time, because they have zero engineering ability and can't build anything.

and africans living among europeans. whom, the moment you give them modern structures with solid foundations, sturdy construction materials as per building codes, electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, fire proofing, appliances, telephone service, cable television and internet... they rarely leave.

we stereotype them as "inner city dwellers" but it's really strange if you think about it, how they don't want to the leave the concrete jungle once they've experienced it, considering, as a group, they are utterly incapable of creating anything like an inner city.

again, left to themselves, they basically live like american indians. totally in the wild. essentially right directly inside national parks. exactly the opposite of what ken burns suggests. yet once they come into contact with europeans, who offer them the option of not living directly in the wild, or even in a rural but civilized area, they voluntarily retreat into the most dense urban civilization which europeans have created, and then don't come back out very often.

Now we know why blacks don't show up at Occupy Wall STreet. They see all those campers with tents on TV and think it's some nature outing. And indeed some white guys seem to be defecating out in the open.

Don't have time to read through all the comments, but this national parks hand wringing thing, which has been ongoing for many years, is now taking place in the Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society, etc...

NPR had a piece promoting Nonwhite visitation to national parks a few days ago.

They interviewed some leader of a Black "outdoors" group. No one actually overtly used the r-word, though it was implied (it always is, no matter the subject, isn't it?).

Consider another case of racial under-representation: Caste-Football points out that in 1981, NFL teams averaged ~10 white starters. Today, teams average 6 white starters, and the NFL has seen a total purge of all whites from the CB, RB, and WR positions. (See here). When will this get a frontpage article in a major paper, coverage on NPR? Or, for that matter, by 'right-wing' Hannity-esque talkers...I suppose they learned their lesson after Limbaugh 2003's gaffe at ESPN.

How urban is the black population, exactly? Blacks tend to be more urban and more neurotic (in the OCEAN sense) in general when it comes to the unknown. Or maybe that's more Openness' purview. Anyway, they tend not to be into new experiences and tend to fear nature. You have to de-program most of them before you can get them into nature. The urban ones, anyway.

The logic behind this statement shows how deeply sick government enforcement of multiculturalism is.

Next time, are they going to cut public funding to opera houses because blacks don't like Mozart and Wagner?

And will they repeat the author's pretense that blacks are anywhere near equal footing with whites as taxpayers?

I think nature is more appealing to introverted types with suburban or country backgrounds.

True, but I dig nature and I was raised in the city. I think the skew is more extreme with blacks.

Blacks tend to be more social(albeit in an anti-social way)and in need of stimulus.

Not a paradox. OCEAN: high extraversion and low agreeableness/openness.

And for some reason, their societies fell apart when we shipped them up to cold, northern cities and had them live in monolithic projects...

"When we shipped them," eh?

We heard from the guy in South Africa already, so there goes your theory.

The question should be 'Why do Central/Northern European Whites like camping?'

Camping = mini Migration Period. Nordics really do like exploring.

or is it like the Jewish justification for predatory money lending and over representation in the NKVD.. "we had too because we were oppressed."

My favorite part of that is how it twists the truth: Christians were denied usury, and Jews weren't, ergo, Jews got to be the rich "victims."

if they travel beyond large urban areas, they're going to run into the KKK.

Sounds like the sort of belief that's inevitable in blacks. Just as Nordics inevitably make a virtue out of openness because it's one of their qualities, blacks make a virtue out of their low openness because it's one of theirs. If it wasn't the KKK, it'd be some other superstition.

I think "notPC" has a good point. Black families tend to be led by females.

To borrow a phrase from Whiskey, girls HATE HATE HATE roughing it.

I came from an intact family, and it was my mother (German maiden name) who was the outdoorsy influence. Just sayin'.

The curious thing about that film was that there wasn't a single woman in the film. That was fixed for the latest remake, though.

Maybe they should have "ripped it from the headlines" and had her demanding a dangerous extraction in bad weather for being homesick. Wait, that can be at the end, so the Thing can make it back to civilization.

Blacks like and are used to the idea of power in numbers. They don't like to be outnumbered. Not that they feel they're gonna be attacked but they just feel like fish out of water in some areas. It's like MIchelle used to bitch and whine that Princeton is like a sea of whiteness--and why blacks demand their own clubs and such on universities.

I'm sure more blacks will take to the outdoors if some savvy businessman creates a black network or community around camping and nature. But personally, last thing I want is to have a bunch of loud blacks outdoors in nature.

When will this get a frontpage article in a major paper, coverage on NPR? but that is an improvements showing our anti-racism laws are working, just like adding eleanor kagan as the third jew on the supreme court is evidence of our non-racist meritocracy.

"in this time of an NBA lockout, the question posed by one of the players, "Why don't we just create our own league?", is highly instructive. yes, why don't you just create your own league? hoops is one of the only things ON EARTH that anybody would actually allow the argument "Blacks are interested in that."

but not interested enough even to create their own league. interested juuuuust enough to play a sport that some other group created, in leagues that other groups established and manage."

Really, but I enjoy watching those games in that Pirate hockey league the NHL players created when their season was canceled by the owners...

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